Well, I want to start off by saying I'm sorry about how lengthy and english-paper-esque
my first Donne (or should I say finished?) blog was. I promise it won't sound so void of personality in the future, so I's like to, ironically, begin with a sonnet about the seemingly finite-death. Upon reading this for the first time (sophomore year) I felt indifferent to it all, thinking that the concept of an afterlife as the ultimate defeat of death was cliche. At this point in time, I'm pretty comfortable with this piece, and after getting acquainted with my pal Johnny Donne,
have come to appreciate the recurrence of themes he shows-especially those about the "defeat" of death and needlesness of mourning, as the afterlife awaits. Can you imagine what this was like for his day? I wonder how people responded. Anyway, in Death Be Not Proud, Donne personifies death in order to emphasize the tone-which is somewhat mocking toward Death, as well as increase the impact of his message: Death is merely a natural event, existing to "cleanup"the mess of fate, etc, defeated by the afterlife.
By capitalizing the word, Death becomes a proper noun (person, place..). To me, this takes Death off of its platform. Let me explain- By personifying Death, Donne takes death, once a feared and
powerful "mighty and dreadful" (2) tragedy, Death becomes a being, or, like a human, mortal. Since Death has become mortal, he/she is ripe for the criticism, as well as death. From here on out, I saw it like this: the speaker of the poem is empowered, confident that death is weak. Why? The speaker clearly rises above and says "Wait! I believe that you, Death, appear like sleep-yep, a nice relaxing rest. And you know what? You aren't so tough. Hell! Fate calls on you-you work for free, cleaning up the results. Oh, and by the way-you can't kill me, nor can you kill anybody else-we wake from you and live in eternal life, so you will cease to live!" That basically says it-note how empowered this tone is-"One short sleep past we wakeeternally and death shalt be no more; Death, thou shalt die."13-14 Isn't it self-explanatory? The speaker's tone of voice is so
empowered, so mocking of Death because Death has essentially become a person-like one of us- capable of feeling our weakness and mortality.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Comentary: "The Good Morrow"-Not bad, eh?
Life, death, and love are some of the most common subjects explored by both philosophers and poets alike. John Donne is no exception to the vast amount of those who have faced the theme of
eternal parting as a physical event, leaving the soul intact, and, therefore, capable of binding two
individuals. As in his poem entitled "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning", Donne has explored
physical versus spiritual separation in "The Good Morrow". In the latter of which, he is partial to the use of question marks in addition to imagery in order to emphasize the theme of the poem, causing it to have a greater emotional effect on the reader through the bittersweet mood it evokes.
Upon reading this poem for the first time, I immediately noticed the recurring use of question marks, as opposed to a solid rhyme scheme, which would have caused this poem to have a narrative, sing-song flow. After chewing on these leathery question marks for some time, I finally came to their purpose. Number one: Think! If a poem has a solid, set in stone rhyme scheme, it is usually to create a song-like flow. A word jumps to mind: predictability. Based on a solid structure, we can infer that a poem may have a hidden message; the themes and content of
this poem are relatively clear, known, and even predictable. By screwing up the chance of rigid
structure with all of these questions, I believe that Donne may have subconsiously made a
valuable point: life is unpredictable. We never know when we'll fall off a cliff, bleed to death of ebola, or end up being devoured by a robotic shark. As a result, we must keep in mind that our souls are capable of living, and loving on. The interrupted flow of this poem-the ?s led me to think that Donne told us of the uncertainty of the eternal, as well as the waking. Number Two:
The ?s really drive it home-at least for me. By asking all of these questions, the poem is set up perfectly for a conversational or call and response type effect. Posing questions not only sets uus up for an eventual answer (second stanza), but works quite well as an introduction in the first stanza-He basically says "What have we been doing our entire lives?! Have we been 'saving ourselves' for fear? Have we been letting ourselves go on impulsive pleasures??!! Gee-I did get to be with ya, but honey, its like a dream, this life, it doesn't last-the physical love between us will eventually decay and we'll die." This basically draws us in because death, love,a nd life are all universally explored, though not necessarily understood, topics.
On to the imagery. First, I thought personally about his message-then connected it to the rest of the poem. The use of figurative langage-the visual imagery really hit me. To me, specifically "My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears," (15) says it all.First of all we gots to uinderstand just what this means, 'cause this old-timey talk can be confusing. Essentially, these two lovers are fully connected-spiritually. Whoa-hold the phone-wha?! Exactly. This brings me to Second of All:
The eyes are the windows to the soul, as is the common belief. With this, as inplugging numbers into an equation, we see that the souls ofthese lovers aretruly bound-through the eyes, we are able to peek in and see the soul of the other individual.
Overall, my opinion of this poem was............
Well, its basically a cliche. I've seen this message so many times before, so naturally, I may not be blown away by "The Good Morrow". But after taking a deeper look, I've realized that this cliche is a-okay.
eternal parting as a physical event, leaving the soul intact, and, therefore, capable of binding two
individuals. As in his poem entitled "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning", Donne has explored
physical versus spiritual separation in "The Good Morrow". In the latter of which, he is partial to the use of question marks in addition to imagery in order to emphasize the theme of the poem, causing it to have a greater emotional effect on the reader through the bittersweet mood it evokes.
Upon reading this poem for the first time, I immediately noticed the recurring use of question marks, as opposed to a solid rhyme scheme, which would have caused this poem to have a narrative, sing-song flow. After chewing on these leathery question marks for some time, I finally came to their purpose. Number one: Think! If a poem has a solid, set in stone rhyme scheme, it is usually to create a song-like flow. A word jumps to mind: predictability. Based on a solid structure, we can infer that a poem may have a hidden message; the themes and content of
this poem are relatively clear, known, and even predictable. By screwing up the chance of rigid
structure with all of these questions, I believe that Donne may have subconsiously made a
valuable point: life is unpredictable. We never know when we'll fall off a cliff, bleed to death of ebola, or end up being devoured by a robotic shark. As a result, we must keep in mind that our souls are capable of living, and loving on. The interrupted flow of this poem-the ?s led me to think that Donne told us of the uncertainty of the eternal, as well as the waking. Number Two:
The ?s really drive it home-at least for me. By asking all of these questions, the poem is set up perfectly for a conversational or call and response type effect. Posing questions not only sets uus up for an eventual answer (second stanza), but works quite well as an introduction in the first stanza-He basically says "What have we been doing our entire lives?! Have we been 'saving ourselves' for fear? Have we been letting ourselves go on impulsive pleasures??!! Gee-I did get to be with ya, but honey, its like a dream, this life, it doesn't last-the physical love between us will eventually decay and we'll die." This basically draws us in because death, love,a nd life are all universally explored, though not necessarily understood, topics.
On to the imagery. First, I thought personally about his message-then connected it to the rest of the poem. The use of figurative langage-the visual imagery really hit me. To me, specifically "My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears," (15) says it all.First of all we gots to uinderstand just what this means, 'cause this old-timey talk can be confusing. Essentially, these two lovers are fully connected-spiritually. Whoa-hold the phone-wha?! Exactly. This brings me to Second of All:
The eyes are the windows to the soul, as is the common belief. With this, as inplugging numbers into an equation, we see that the souls ofthese lovers aretruly bound-through the eyes, we are able to peek in and see the soul of the other individual.
Overall, my opinion of this poem was............
Well, its basically a cliche. I've seen this message so many times before, so naturally, I may not be blown away by "The Good Morrow". But after taking a deeper look, I've realized that this cliche is a-okay.
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